Anthony Smith is having a hard time after his UFC Vegas 8 main event loss to Aleksandar Rakic.
Smith was returning to the Octagon just three months after his beatdown loss to Glover Teixeira in May. “Lionheart” entered the fight as a sizeable underdog and early on got dropped due to leg kicks. Rakic was beating his leg up and for the rest of the fight the Austrian dominated it with ground and pound.
Now, just days after his loss, Smith went on MMA on SiriusXM and opened up saying he is not doing well physically or mentally.
“It’s not good,” he said when asked about the state of his leg, which took a significant amount of punishment in the fight (via BJPENN.com). “It’s not good at all. I’m still on crutches, so there’s that.
“If I’m being really honest with you guys, I’m not doing well,” Smith added, opening up on his mental state. “I’m super disappointed. I couldn’t get out of bed on Sunday. They had to send people from the [UFC Performance Institute] to my hotel room and drug me up and put a bunch of anti-inflammatory creams and big compression ice machines [on me]. It was like I had a whole f**king team in my room.
“It’s a little bit better today,” Smith continued. “There’s an occult fracture on my fibula head, so that’s cool. It sounds bad, but it’s not a huge deal actually. In four to six weeks it will be fine.”
For Anthony Smith, he said the leg kicks made it impossible for him to fight how he wanted to. He could barely stand on it so he couldn’t generate any power striking. So, he had to keep the fight on the ground and see if he could pull out a submission.
Not only is the defeat disappointing, but Smith is surprised his leg gave out after just three leg kicks from Rakic.
“Had I not had the leg damage, I would have changed my gameplan and just said ‘alright, we’re just going to stand in this boxing range and we’re just going to go to town here,’” he said. “And I’m confident I’d have been fine. But I couldn’t take one more leg kick. I didn’t have the ability to change my game plan to just strike with him and just box, because the one time he steps back into kicking range, and I don’t have enough time to close that distance, I’m down, and I’m not getting back up.
“That’s the thing. He kicked me three times. That is nuts. Hector Lombard kicked me 32 times in that fight. No issues. Three kicks from Aleksandar Rakic and I’m on crutches.”
Where Anthony Smith goes from here is uncertain. There is no question this is a disappointing loss for him.
What do you think should be next for Anthony Smith?